Amnesty International Report - June 2018: Undeniable USA mass war crime in Raqqa - Syria

The Amnesty International report of June 5, 2018,

Syria: “War of annihilation”: Devastating toll on civilians, Raqqa – Syria

5 June 2018, Index number: MDE 24/8367/2018 

https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE2483672018ENGLISH.PDF

presents undeniable evidence of USA criminal disregard for civilian life, on a mass scale, in a populated city, and calls for official investigations leading to war crimes prosecutions.

The Report is an administrative description of USA evil deeds, performed under a cover of media silence and war propaganda at home.

The disregard for human life and urban installations on such a scale, under questionable pretext, while illegally attacking a sovereign nation, is as criminal as war crimes get.

The USA has no legitimacy in its proxy war for regime change in Syria.


Here are excerpts from the June 2018 70-page Amnesty International Report:

Amnesty International researchers travelled to Raqqa in February 2018 and spent two weeks visiting 42 locations of strikes and interviewing 112 witnesses and survivors. The organisation analysed satellite imagery and reviewed other publicly available material. This report documents the experiences of four families whose cases are emblematic of wider patterns.

The cases provide prima facie evidence that several Coalition attacks which killed and injured civilians violated international humanitarian law. ... Coalition forces did not take adequate account of civilians present in the city and failed to take the precautions necessary to minimise harm to civilians and civilian objects. ...

To date, the Coalition has not explained why it continued to launch strikes which killed so many civilians while a deal granting IS fighters impunity and safe passage out of the city was being considered and negotiated. Many survivors of Coalition strikes interviewed by Amnesty International asked why Coalition forces needed to destroy an entire city and kill so many civilians with bombardments supposedly targeting IS fighters – only to then allow IS fighters to leave the city unharmed. ...

In all the cases detailed in this report, Coalition forces launched air strikes on buildings full of civilians using wide-area effect munitions, which could be expected to destroy the buildings. In all four cases, the civilians killed and injured in the attacks, including many women and children, had been staying in the buildings for long periods prior to the strikes. Had Coalition forces conducted rigorous surveillance prior to the strikes, they would have been aware of their presence. Amnesty International found no information indicating that IS fighters were present in the buildings when they were hit and survivors and witnesses to these strikes were not aware of IS fighters in the vicinity of the houses at the time of the strikes. Even had IS fighters been present, it would not have justified the targeting of these civilian dwellings with munitions expected to cause such extensive destruction.

The Coalition has so far refused to even acknowledge the scale of harm caused to civilians by the military campaign. At the height of the Raqqa battle, in September 2017, outgoing Coalition commander, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, wrote that “…there has never been a more precise air campaign in the history of armed conflict”. However, this precise air campaign killed hundreds of civilians. At the same time, US Marines’ activities described by Army Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell (senior enlisted adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), suggests that the Coalition operation was far from precise: “In five months they fired 30,000 artillery rounds on ISIS targets… They fired more rounds in five months in Raqqa, Syria, than any other Marine artillery battalion, or any Marine or Army battalion, since the Vietnam War.”

Given that standard artillery shells fired from an M777 howitzer have an average margin of error of over 100m, launching so many of these shells into a city where civilians were trapped in every neighbourhood posed an unacceptable risk to civilians. Yet despite incontrovertible evidence of civilian casualties and wholesale destruction in Raqqa, and the high level of civilian casualties, the Coalition narrative remains unchanged.

The international Coalition [allegedly] to defeat IS in Iraq and Syria was formed in 2014. Named “Operation Inherent Resolve”, it sought to present itself as an international Coalition with broad-based support from nations and institutions around the world. But the military action it took in Raqqa against IS was an overwhelmingly US military affair. Under the command of a US General, US forces fired 100% of the artillery into Raqqa and carried out over 90% of the air strikes. British and French forces were the only other Coalition members to strike Raqqa from the air. ...

Eight months after military operation ended, most of the city’s residents remain displaced and those who have returned are living in dire conditions among the mountains of rubble and the stench of dead bodies trapped beneath, facing the threat of mines/improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and unexploded ordnance. Virtually every resident of Raqqa who spoke to Amnesty International asked why those who could spend so much for a costly military campaign to destroy the city cannot provide the relief so desperately needed in its aftermath, including the heavy-lifting equipment needed to clear the rubble and recover the bodies and clear the IEDs.

My comment in square brackets.

NOTE: This Amnesty International Report follows massive 2017 criticism of the organization's nasty propaganda work regarding Syria, when it was widely dubbed "Shamnesty International": LINK TO LINKS. Maybe it understands now that true human rights defenders are well informed?

Rainbows can be toxic

 "Goodness", "green thought" and rainbows can be toxic. Knee-jerk "progressiveness" is irresponsible and harmful.

• Pinkwashing includes when Israel's on-going brutal war crimes (a la Geneva Conventions) are covered up by Israel's alleged queer friendliness.


• Greenwashing includes when devastating exploitation by global finance structures is covered up by promotion of CO2 policy managed by the said structures.


• Humanrightswashing includes when alleging to protect human rights is cover and the pretext for nation-annihilating war, from the repulsive "Responsability to Protect (R2P)" UN doctrine, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya...

On-going mass crime against Yemen

The Saudi war against Yemen is a grotesque violation of the lives and dignity of innocent women, children, and civilians who seek nothing more than peaceful lives under democratic rule of their own choice.

This vile Saudi mass-crime, and the associated inhuman blockade, condoned and supported by the USA, Canada, and the silent Western world, is presently the worst on-going genocidal attack on the planet.

By such behaviour, the West and Saudi show themselves to be hypocritical, vicious, and murderous. I cannot condemn my own government (Canada) enough, which sells arms for profit to the Saudi thugs.

Africa and USA global dominance

AFRICA ::: The US-global elite is losing Africa to China and BRICS. The increasing backlash will include more propaganda pressure to commit more US-led efforts to bring more "democracy" and "human rights" to the continent, including saving women, preventing environmental destruction, fighting terrorism, and managing against global warming... all the usual propaganda scams to justify massive CIA, NGO, and military presence -- for local regime control to the benefit of globalist finance and corporate (extraction) interests.

(See an example of the said propaganda here: “U.S. cutbacks undermine efforts to keep Africa’s population in check”, Globe and Mail, April 17, 2017. Too easy to be critical of this one as solely racist, rather than as tentative propaganda in the service of USA globalism, IMO.)

Towards a Rational Legal Philosophy of Individual Rights

This article was first publishe on Dissident Voice.

By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD


Summary: I briefly describe the anthropological origin and recent statutory embodiments of human rights of individuals. I show that the modern “democratic” state moderates the rights of individuals by both: (1) violating the said rights in order to maintain and enforce the societal dominance hierarchy, and (2) preventing disproportionate violations, to avoid inciting rebellion. The courts are charged with these tasks but must not appear to represent an oppressive state. The courts’ practical solution has been to develop the legal artifice of “balancing conflicting rights”, where the court presents itself as a neutral arbitrator providing “access to justice”, rather than the enforcer that it is. I develop several examples involving the human rights of freedom of thought, expression, and movement, and the right to a fair trial. I show that the said legal artifice is best dismantled by a method of compartmentalization where a given act producing harm that is a crime (or offence or civil liability) is compartmentalized into its distinct elements that either constitute the crime or are human-rights freedoms that are not in play at trial or in sentencing.

Rights to limit freedom

In a simple small-scale pre-civilization society, one has the “rights” of what is culturally accepted. Transgressions beyond the accepted norms are punished or otherwise corrected. Thus, there are no “individual or human rights” in such circumstances.

While simple small-scale societies have tight internal cohesion, historically such pre-civilization societies were frequently subjected to violent inter-tribe warring, which was a source of massive physical insecurity for the individual, compared to relatively small risk of lethal harm in large post-civilization societies.¹ Large post-civilization societies have the advantage of dramatically reduced warring risk to the individual, and the disadvantage of institutionalized structures regimenting individual behaviour and associations.

The concept of an accepted or statutory right that is intrinsically held by the individual arose in large post-civilization societies that employ institutions to maintain hierarchical order and class structure. For example, citizens of national states are given statutory (by law) procedural protections against abuses of the societal dominance hierarchy. Likewise, individuals on a globalized Earth are given “human rights” by various international instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Even warring itself is regulated to be less barbaric by such statutes as The Geneva Conventions, 1948, and their Additional Protocols.

In application, “individual rights” are institutional instruments used both to control individuals and to prevent systemic abuses against individuals, in order to stabilize and protect the class-hierarchical structures of post-civilization society, which are hugely beneficial to the human species.
As such, the said instruments must be designed and applied in a manner that is consistent with their actual function, in all the various circumstances where individual autonomy can threaten the established hierarchy and where systemic abuse can nurture revolt. This is the task of law makers (members of parliament) and tribunal and court decision makers (judges and arbitrators), following established recommended practice (referred to as “principles”).

Here, “bad laws”, for example, are laws that unnecessarily infringe on individual liberty, where the hierarchy is not at risk, or laws that create overwhelming resentment, or laws that limit the abilities of individuals to organize and adjust in ways that stabilize the hierarchy. “Good laws” maximize the stability of the hierarchy, by balancing allowed individual freedom against predatory class interests, while minimizing violence to individuals. A constant challenge is corruption: influence peddling to make socially pathological laws that advantage influential groups and dominant classes while weakening the societal hierarchy as a whole.

Since all of this “lawyering” needs to be invented in practice, there is the possibility that “principles” of application are not optimized or end up containing paradoxical contradictions. I argue that such is the case with individual rights that are considered “human rights”, and I offer a solution. I illustrate with the fundamental human rights of freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

Freedom of thought, belief, and opinion

Freedom of thought or freedom of belief is the right to have whatever thoughts or beliefs one has or wishes to have. Throughout much of post-civilization history, specified thoughts and beliefs have been considered sins or crimes, even if not manifestly expressed. Controllers sought out and punished or purged thoughts and beliefs that were judged to be threatening to the established order, to the overarching hierarchy.

In modern times in Western societies, “thought crimes” are largely frowned upon, and it is mostly recognized that thoughts can only be threatening if they are expressed or acted upon. This recognition is enshrined in the international law, where in the jurisprudence of the ICCPR it is unequivocally and expressly determined that freedom of thought or belief (opinion) is an absolute right of the individual, which cannot be violated by a state actor under any circumstances.² In particular, one cannot be forced to disclose one’s thoughts or beliefs. This relates to a criminally accused person having an absolute right not to testify or incriminate himself or herself.

The explicit wording of the international law is³:

Paragraph 1 of article 19 requires protection of the right to hold opinions without interference. This is a right to which the Covenant permits no exception or restriction. Freedom of opinion extends to the right to change an opinion whenever and for whatever reason a person so freely chooses. No person may be subject to the impairment of any rights under the Covenant on the basis of his or her actual, perceived or supposed opinions. All forms of opinion are protected, including opinions of a political, scientific, historic, moral or religious nature. It is incompatible with paragraph 1 to criminalize the holding of an opinion. The harassment, intimidation or stigmatization of a person, including arrest, detention, trial or imprisonment for reasons of the opinions they may hold, constitutes a violation of article 19, paragraph 1. (reference numbers removed, emphasis added)

Many state constitutions contain equivalent statements or implied rule, and all signatory states are required to make their laws consistent with this right.

Needed consistency in implementing absolute right of free thought

In practice, however, even this expressly absolute right is at odds with the criminal-law practice of inferring “motive” as a factor determining sentencing. In this way, wilful murder judged to have been premeditated is punished more severely than wilful murder decided in immediate circumstances, which in turn is punished more severely than murder judged to have been unintended. Likewise, crimes judged to have been politically motivated (“terrorism”) are judged far more severely than the same crimes that are “merely criminal”.

Thus, there is an apparent contradiction between the right to freedom of thought and the practice of states to infer thoughts from evidence in determining sentencing. There is the added and significant problem that in-court arguments about (and evidence used to support) inferred negative thoughts create a trial environment that is prejudicial against the accused regarding guilt of the physical crime itself. The legal culture of the adversarial system does nothing to solve this fundamental problem, which is compounded by media reporting.

A solution is to dissociate the physical crime (e.g. damage to property, bodily harm) from the thoughts or motives of the accused, and not to allow thoughts and motives to be relevant in the courtroom. This would remove the state from the business of inferring thoughts and would improve the system’s ability to find the knowable truth. It would make the system stick to physical reality, with fewer unforeseen negative societal consequences, and less potential to “run out of control” as practice evolves and societal misdirections are experienced. It would also procedurally prevent indulging the media in its pathological practice of seeking mob reactions based on emotional imagery.

Thus, we see that the expressly absolute right of freedom of thought and belief (opinion) (not to be confused with the right of freedom of expression) is preserved by not allowing a thought component in any crime or offence that is punishable by the state, or in any civil case for damages.
The solution was achieved by admitting that the impugned event (e.g. murder) has separate components or elements that can be compartmentalized, and that the state can solely be concerned with one of the compartments. Here: the physical action(s) that led to the death of a person, in one compartment; and the thoughts, beliefs, or motives in the mind of the accused who is alleged to have made the said action(s), in a separate and distinct conceptual compartment. The state’s response is concerned solely with reparation, prevention, and deterrence regarding the physical action(s). Any punishment component intended to change the mind of the accused person, and having no demonstrated preventative or deterrence value, has no place in the legal system of a state that admits an absolute right of freedom of thought and belief.

More examples below illustrate how the convoluted legal landscape of allegedly “competing rights” can be made rational by applying conceptual compartmentalization in the analysis of any action or event that both attracts an accepted fundamental right and is the cause of harm constituting a crime, offence, or civil liability.

Applications of compartmentalization

Consider the canonical example that one cannot scream “fire” in a crowded cinema. The right of freedom of expression is implicated, as is the predictable harm or high risk of harm caused by the expression, in circumstances where the expression will likely produce a stampede response. The classic treatment of this example is for the decision maker to expound that “One person’s freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins”, a phrase which captures the jurisprudence of “conflicting rights”.

Although “jurisprudence” makes the idea sound scholarly, actually the said idea has its origins with nineteenth century US prohibition activists. In particular, an 1887 newspaper in Atlanta quoted from a speech in favour of prohibition laws as⁴:

The only leading argument urged by the anti-prohibitionists in this campaign for keeping open the bar-rooms, is personal liberty. A great man has said, “your personal liberty to swing your arm ends where my nose begins”. A man’s personal liberty to drink whisky and support barrooms ends where the rights of the family and the community begin.

The problem can be resolved without reference to “competing rights”, as follows. Screaming “fire” in a crowded cinema has two separate compartments: One is the expression, including the choice of words and the full quality of how the words are delivered (loudness, tone, emotional expression, gestures, etc.), while the other is the offence of choosing to make that expression in physical circumstances where there is a high, predictable, and imminent risk of serious physical harm or death.
The said offence is the crime of having significantly risked or actually caused harm or death. By this compartmentalization, the right of freedom of expression is not in play, is not in conflict with the rights of others not to be assaulted (safety), and need not itself be limited (such as forbidding the word “fire” to be uttered in a cinema or elsewhere, or gagging the convicted person from ever again using the word “fire”). The state will charge the accused with the harm that he or she caused, irrespective of the method chosen to produce the harm. Murder by gun or knife or poison or booby trap or by predictable consequence of any action, is always murder with the same consequence. The violated right to life in committing murder has nothing whatsoever to do with one’s “right” to carry a gun, own a knife, buy rat poison, test booby traps, or scream words.

Similarly, the flailing fist crime can be compartmentalized into the freedom of moving one’s body, as distinct from the offence of striking another person. Intent and carelessness can both produce the same bloody nose, and freedom of body movement is not in play in either. There is no rational advantage to posit that the right of body movement “conflicts” with the right not to be assaulted (safety). The right of body movement is not itself infringed by the state addressing the alleged assault, and is not relevant to the legal analysis of the crime.

The right of freedom of expression gives rise to several more examples of such posited false “conflicts”:

(1) An employer fires an employee and then makes false negative statements about the employee to other employers. The employer’s freedom of expression is not in play in making the false negative statements. The post-firing offence is the predictable material harm (economic and personal hardship) done to the former employee, in the circumstances of the employer’s power and influence. The concept of freedom of expression need never enter the legal analysis, and should not be entertained by the court. Likewise, there should be no protection of “privilege” for the employer. The offense either occurred or it did not, and discovery of the facts should not be impeded by any legalistic shroud of secrecy.

(2) An army general orders a platoon to decimate an entire village of civilians. The general’s human right to freedom of expression is not in play. The crime is the war crime that is a predictable consequence of the general’s order.

(3) A publisher prints or posts pornography, such as images of full nudity and explicit sexual acts with humans or other animals or whatever. Free expression is free expression. A rational addressable offence must be based on predictable, real and demonstrated harm to a specific individual (victim). Broad and non-specific community norms or morals cannot legitimately be used to silence explicit sexual expression, or else a new class of victimless and bloodless offence has been created, which makes the human right of the individual to freedom of expression meaningless. But allowing such an offence, using founded or unfounded arguments about harm to children from exposure and so forth, simply defines the said new offence as the relevant compartment for legal examination. As such, within that questionable exercise, freedom of expression is not in play and there is no benefit to posit “conflicting rights”.⁵

(4) A pamphleteer publishes material that is said to attack an identifiable or self-identified group (gay bashing, Holocaust denial, etc.). Again the rational and compartmentalized legal analysis must be focussed on defining the new victimless and bloodless offence in which the undemonstrated direct or indirect “harm” is broadly distributed to a group. The indirect route typically involves the impugned expression “causing” the said group to be “subjected to hate” from unspecified individuals in the broad society. Once this creative and non-trivial legal task is achieved, the right of freedom of expression is not in play. The only legal decision is whether the said new offence, as defined by statute or common law, is proven to have been committed by the accused, actual and demonstrated harm or not. Lip service about freedom of expression or “conflicting rights” is of no legal consequence whatsoever.

(5) Likewise, the question with child pornography is not one of freedom of expression. Rather, it is a question of criminal harm to a child, and support for an industry of criminal harm to children. Regarding possession, there should be a significant and meaningful connection between “support for the industry” and the actual harm to the child victim for sentencing to be justified. This opens the door to the crime of consumer “support for the industry” for any industry that is demonstrated to cause significant harm to actual persons. There is no lack of such industry, both legal and illegal. Nonetheless, once any such “crime” is defined, no fundamental human right is in play. However, “consumer freedom” certainly acquires a new meaning.

“Competing rights” judicial whitewash

My point about compartmentalization is not peripheral. Pronouncements of the highest courts addressing human rights are consistently replete with the fallacy of “conflicting rights”. For example⁶:

Resolving Competing Charter Rights

33  The proper approach to the problem created by a conflict in the protected rights of individuals was outlined by the Chief Justice in Dagenais, supra.  After stressing that Charter rights are of equal value, he continued as follows, at p. 877: When the protected rights of two individuals come into conflict, as can occur in the case of publication bans, Charter principles require a balance to be achieved that fully respects the importance of both sets of rights.

34  I have gone to some length to stress that Charter rights are not absolute in the sense that they cannot be applied to their full extent regardless of the context.  Application of Charter values must take into account other interests and in particular other Charter values which may conflict with their unrestricted and literal enforcement.  This approach to Charter values is especially apt in this case in that the conflicting rights are protected under the same section of the Charter.

35  Applying the foregoing to the question posed at the commencement of this analysis, the appropriate choice of the three solutions is readily apparent.  The first option would allow the right to silence to trump the right to full answer and defence.  This would apply one right fully in complete disregard of another equal right.  Similarly, the second option would allow the right to full answer and defence to trump the right to silence.  This again is counter to the approach which was approved in Dagenais, supra, in that it applies one right in absolute terms to the detriment of another equal right.  The third solution which strikes a balance between the two is the correct approach.  It remains to determine how the two rights can be reconciled in order to give the fullest respect possible to the Charter values which underpin these rights.

Actually, the latter case is a straightforward one where the state upheld an infringement of a criminally accused person’s human right to pre-trial silence. The “balancing of rights” approach used was merely a pretext to condone the state’s violation of allowing pre-trial silence to serve as evidence of guilt or credibility. The dissenting opinion of Justice McLachlin did not engage in the dubious “balancing” (see para. 43 of the ruling).

On the other hand, when the court saw its “right to administer justice” (framed as the right of litigants to access justice) challenged by citizens’ “right to protest” against the government’s court itself, in the form of a picket line, then the machination of “balancing rights” somewhat melted away, and the same court upheld an injunction by expounding⁷:

71 … The Charter surely does not self‑destruct in a dynamic of conflicting rights. The remarks of Salmon L.J. in Morris v. Crown Office, supra, at pp. 1086‑87, although not made with reference to an entrenched constitutional right, are still apposite. The appellants had been found in contempt for having disrupted a trial to which they were not parties by staging a protest, shouting slogans and scattering pamphlets: … Every member of the public has an inalienable right that our courts shall be left free to administer justice without obstruction or interference from whatever quarter it may come. Take away that right and freedom of speech together with all the other freedoms would wither and die, for in the long run it is the courts of justice which are the last bastion of individual liberty. The appellants, rightly or wrongly, think that they have a grievance. They are undoubtedly entitled to protest about it, but certainly not in the fashion they have chosen. In an attempt, and a fairly successful attempt, to gain publicity for their cause, they have chosen to disrupt the business of the courts and have scornfully trampled on the rights which everyone has in the due administration of justice; and for this they have been very properly punished, so that it may be made plain to all that such conduct will not be tolerated‑‑even by students. (Emphasis in the original.)

Thus, here the court abandoned “conflicting rights” and “discovered” one of those rare legal gems, an example of an “absolute right”, which need not be balanced by some intricate accommodation. The particular effectively absolute right is not a human right. Rather it is a “right” for the state to operate absolutely without protest or disruption. The tangential true human right is the individual’s right to a fair trial, which is the foundation of the open court principle that is directly in issue when the court, by whatever procedure, interferes with public participation in its process…

The judicial ballad of “rights” is thus truly intricate: in the practice implicating human rights of the individual, it is largely sophistry, intended to smooth over the state’s violations by appealing to a false compromise alleged to be justified. Typically, the said “balance” opposes a true human right of an individual to an alleged “right” of the state to violate the human right of the individual, while casting the state’s “right” as directly arising from or derived from different human or accepted rights of other individuals.

In Canada, an established rights-delimiting exercise is the so-called Dagenais/Mentuck test for court-ordered publication bans, which is said to balance the conflicting rights of media publication (partly derived from the human right of freedom of expression, because without access to information expression is limited) and a fair and public trial, although the latter consideration is actually more about disruption of the state’s trial and the little-understood and unpredictable phenomenon of public-information influence on the jury. The test states⁸:

A publication ban should only be ordered when: (a) such an order is necessary in order to prevent a serious risk to the proper administration of justice because reasonably alternative measures will not prevent the risk; and (b) the salutary effects of the publication ban outweigh the deleterious effects on the rights and interests of the parties and the public, including the effects on the right to free expression, the right of the accused to a fair and public trial, and the efficacy of the administration of justice.

Here, we see the compartmentalization that I am proposing: in fact, if branch-(a) is satisfied, then the decision has entirely been made and branch-(b) is irrelevant. The court already considers the “proper administration of justice” to be an effectively absolute “right” of the state. The word “necessary” is a directive to judges not to overdo it. Once the judge has made the determination of what is necessary, then no other consideration of “rights” is relevant, whether they are true human rights or not.

Therefore, we see that in all the situations of “conflicting rights” reviewed above, in which the court contemplates limiting a true human right of the individual (thought, expression, freedom, life), the lip service about “balancing rights” is really just a cover for the state’s decision to limit the said human right of the individual, either minimally or disproportionately. The jurisprudence about “balancing rights” is simply a guide for the trial judge, warning her that she is in circumstances where she is enforcing infringement of a human right, and therefore must be careful only to apply the court’s discretion to the degree “necessary” or accepted by current societal “norms”.

Defamation law Neanderthal nonsense

Another class of cases where the artifice of “conflicting rights” in free expression occurs is in the vast area of defamation law. Here the courts contemplate “balancing” to true human right of freedom of expression of the individual with a “right” of a plaintiff to “protect his or her reputation”. This is problematic because “reputation” is opinions that non-specific persons at large (non-parties to the litigation) have about the plaintiff, and the psychology of opinion formation is unknown, complex, and highly variable.

Defamation law, unlike the tort of injurious falsehood, does not require actual harm to be proven. Damages from harm to reputation are presumed if the words, judged sufficiently offensive, were published. Millions of dollars can be awarded without any evidence for actual or special damage being presented. There is no cap on the so-called general damages that can be awarded. Malice, also, is presumed, in that intent to harm is irrelevant; as is falsity because the defendant has the onus to prove truth, or another common-law defence. Such is the common law tort of defamation.

Defamation law is the ultimate instrument of the rich and powerful to silence critics, and it has no logical justification, outside of injurious falsehood tort requirements, beyond the plaintiff not liking what has been expressed by the defendant. A full state-condoned and state-administered litigation can be brought to bear on the defendant, without the plaintiff having any onus to argue actual damage, intent to harm, or falsity, while the entire litigation evolves in the nebulous realm of “reputation” that is unquantifiable and need not be quantified. There is not even a legal requirement that the “reputation” be demonstrated to have decreased as a causal consequence of the defendant’s expression complained of, and the plaintiff has discretion to exclusively target any person(s) in the publication chain (author, editor, publisher, re-seller, broadcaster, etc., or anyone who repeats the words complained of). Any incident of repetition or republication, by anyone, of exactly the same words complained of, which could have been originally published decades ago, is a new legal defamation event liable under law.

This is the beast that the courts find can reasonably be opposed to the human right of freedom of expression, in a “balancing” exercise between “conflicting rights”. It is no wonder that the common law of defamation in Canada is demonstrably noncompliant with international law, and with Canada’s obligations pursuant to the ICCPR.⁹

With defamation law, my compartmentalization approach is applied straightforwardly. Once the offence of defamation is defined by the common law, no matter how contrived and problematic, the only question becomes “Has the offence been committed?”. If yes, and the defendant has not proven a defence specified by the common law, then the defendant is liable. The human right of freedom of expression is simply not visited and is irrelevant. Lip service may have been paid to the said human right in elaborating the limited and specified allowed defences, and that is it.

So, if one is prepared to define a civil offense such as defamation, and to only adjust allowed defences, then one accepts that one can be punished, and repeatedly punished, for words, by those with the means to make lawsuits, while not being barred by physical force from exercising one’s right to freedom of expression¹⁰:

2  But freedom of expression is not absolute. One limitation on free expression is the law of defamation, which protects a person’s reputation from unjustified assault. The law of defamation does not forbid people from expressing themselves. It merely provides that if a person defames another, that person may be required to pay damages to the other for the harm caused to the other’s reputation. However, if the defences available to a publisher are too narrowly defined, the result may be “libel chill”, undermining freedom of expression and of the press.

3  Two conflicting values are at stake — on the one hand freedom of expression and on the other the protection of reputation.  While freedom of expression is a fundamental freedom protected by s. 2(b) of the Charter, courts have long recognized that protection of reputation is also worthy of legal recognition. The challenge of courts has been to strike an appropriate balance between them in articulating the common law of defamation. In this case, we are asked to consider, once again, whether this balance requires further adjustment. (Emphasis added.)

Actually, the above (emphasized) statement of the Supreme Court of Canada is misleading because, in practice, following findings of liability for defamation judges routinely make permanent injunctions (permanent gag orders) against repetition, and against even unknown future expression, and violations of these injunctions have been punished by jail sentences (See Footnote No. 9).

State obligation to abolish defamation law

In contrast, given state obligations pursuant to the ICCPR, any reputational-harm limitations to freedom of expression must be codified in law, and follow “strict tests of necessity and proportionality” (See Footnote No. 9). Relevant questions become: When is it necessary to protect an individual from actual damages caused by loss of “reputation”? (An employer-employee example is given above.) Is it ever necessary to protect a person from unspecified opinions at large, which do not demonstrably cause actual and quantifiable damages? Is it in the public interest to pursue such legal exercises?

I think we must recognize that the human right of freedom of expression is meaningless in a s tate that allows the common-law tort of defamation. The tort of injurious falsehood, by comparison, is workable, and logically accommodates compartmentalization, where the plaintiff has the onus to prove malice (intent to harm with expression known to be false), falsity, and actual or special damages, in order to establish the offence. However, the tort of defamation is a legal obscenity that thrives in the swamp of unspecified negative opinions about the plaintiff, presumed to be held by unspecified persons at large, who are non-parties to the litigation. The said unknown opinions are the “harm to the reputation”, and they are presumed to have been “caused” by the impugned expression of the targeted defendant. Thus, the layers are distant, unknown, and impossible to causally connect.
Defamation law is a sham that should be abolished. It is inherited from less-democratic times in the history of civilization, and it supports a wasteful legal industry that is harmful to society.

Conclusion

There are no rights that legitimately conflict with and must be balanced against fundamental human rights.  There is only a state that wishes to indulge itself or privileged sectors of society with limiting the human rights of individuals. The courts have the double practical task of preventing the state’s disproportionate or intolerable violations of human rights, while also enforcing the thus measured violations of human rights. Rather than being transparent about the true nature of this task that is meant to stabilize and enforce the societal dominance hierarchy, the courts have developed the device of “balancing” rights alleged to be held by different members in society, thereby creating the illusion that the court is a mere arbitrator giving “access to justice”, rather than an enforcer.


Endnotes

1. Keith Windschuttle, “Enduring myth of ‘noble savage’ vs. a species at continuous war?”, The Washington Times, 2003-08-16, in reviewing: Lawrence Keely, “War Before Civilization”, 1996, Oxford University Press. []
2. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 19, paragraph 1; and General comment No. 34, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee, 102nd session, CCPR/C/GC/34, paragraphs 5, 9, and 10. []
3. General comment No. 34, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee, 102nd session, CCPR/C/GC/34, paragraph 9 []
4. Quote Investigator, “Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins”, 2011-10-15, accessed on 2016-11-12 []
5. For overviews of the contorted jurisprudence in the area of sexual freedom and obscenity see: Edward de Grazia, “Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius”, 1992, Constable, London, ISBN 0 09 470950 5; Alan N. Young, “Justice Defiled: Perverts, Potheads, Serial Killers & Lawyers”, 2003, Key Porter Books, ISBN 1 55263 225 3. []
6. R. v. Crawford, [1995] 1 SCR 858, 1995 CanLII 138 (SCC), paragraphs 33 to 35. (SCC, Supreme Court of Canada). []
7. B.C.G.E.U. v. British Columbia (Attorney General), [1988] 2 SCR 214, 1988 CanLII 3 (SCC), at paragraph 71 []
8. R. v. Mentuck, [2001] 3 SCR 442, 2001 SCC 76 (CanLII), at paragraph 32 []
9. Denis G. Rancourt, “Canadian defamation law is noncompliant with international law”, report for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association, 2016-02-01. []
10. Grant v. Torstar Corp., [2009] 3 SCR 640, 2009 SCC 61 (CanLII), paragraphs 2 and 3 []

Dear Chinese Premier Li Keqiang

as I posted earlier to Facebook...

Dear Chinese Premier Li Keqiang:

On your visit to Canada, please make a point of publicly reminding Prime Minister Trudeau that Canada needs to be far more attentive to its international human rights obligations.

As you know, Canada's jails are overcrowded with citizens. The bail system systemically denies constitutional rights. Physical isolation that amounts to torture is widely used. Jail sentences are disproportionate and there is no rehabilitation. The police summarily attack and murder black, aboriginal, and economically excluded citizens on the streets and in detention. A Black man was summarily murdered by police in my own neighbourhood in Canada’s capital city Ottawa just days ago. Police entrapment and its organizing of citizens to commit criminal acts are routine. Critical political expression is criminalized and prosecuted. A defamation law that is contrary to international law is in wide application to silence any influential voices. A family court system and state-empowered family “services” conspire to attack the families of the working and economically-excluded classes, with absolute power and virtually no oversight. An immigration authority simply jails applicants for indeterminate periods. Legal fees are beyond access for ordinary litigants, thus ensuring that the courts can only be used by wealthy individuals and corporations. When corporations go bankrupt the creditors get legal priority and employee pensions are effectively robbed with government blessings. Corporations and foreign and domestic investors hold local governments to ransom and devastate communities at will with closures, relocations, and property “development”. The list is a long one. The negative impact on the Canadian social fabric is immeasurable, as is the impact on global values.

China's historic large-scale creation of economic justice and its independence from US corporate dominance should be an example to Canada. Your words will carry the weight of China's stature. Please intervene for the good of Canada.

Sincerely,
Denis Rancourt, PhD
Researcher, Ontario Civil Liberties Association

Canada's Genocide Explained

A 5-minute video interview with Dr. Bruce Clark.




"This video segment captures Dr. Bruce Clark’s riveting and historically correct account of Canada’s genocide of the Aboriginal Peoples.

The state’s systematic and total destruction of peoples, food sources, economic base, family ties, and culture -- facilitated by a legal structure, technology, and institutionalized child theft -- may be unprecedented in human history.

Dr. Clark is an expert on aboriginal rights jurisprudence and was a dedicated advocate for aboriginal land rights in Canada. He represented Gustafsen Lake Faith Keepers at the Gustafsen Lake Standoff in 1995 near Shuswap, BC. From defender of Aboriginal rights before Canadian and international courts to being jailed and disbarred for advancing legal arguments, Dr. Clark's struggle is itself a mirror of Canada’s genocidal crimes.

The high-definition version of the full one-hour video interview is on the film maker's channel: https://youtu.be/lp97_pKafC0

Dr. Bruce Clark: Aboriginal rights lawyer
Denis Rancourt: Interviewer, for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)
Produced by the OCLA (http://ocla.ca/)
Filmmaker: Peter Biesterfeld

About the Ontario Civil Liberties Association:
The Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA) defends civil liberties at a time when fundamental freedoms are being eroded in all spheres of social life. OCLA opposes institutional policies and decisions that deprive individuals of their personal liberty or exclude individuals from participation in the democratic functions of society.

Related links
Articles by Dr. Bruce Clark published on Dissident Voice:
http://dissidentvoice.org/author/bruceclark/

Civil liberties activism is a battle against pernicious totalitarianism

Rigorous freedom of expression advocacy, applied irrespective of societal taboos and dominant attitudes, is always political because it always has an effect towards leveling the playing field between powerful state-backed corporate and institutional forces and the individual.

 Discourse, including the extremes, is the main democratic mechanism against spontaneous advances of totalitarianism.

That is why the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, has defended the freedoms of both the KKK and the Black Panther Party, when these freedoms were most at risk. Any group or individual that most needs protection to express, from state-backed threats, should be protected to express.

Otherwise, democratic discourse is impeded and society suffers, to the benefit of dominant power. A stale and thought-moderated "safe space" society is a dead and totalitarian society having no push back against increasing control and exploitation by the top.

Civil liberties activism is a battle against pernicious totalitarianism. Expression is a fundamental human right. We need to hear our worst fears in order to express solutions.


Related article:

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/03/how-defamation-law-has-developed-and-is-applied-in-canada/

AEI Award for Netanyahu Is Meant to Repair the US-Israel Split: Prof. Denis Rancourt -- Truth NGO

AEI Award for Netanyahu Is Meant to Repair the US-Israel Split: Prof. Denis Rancourt

Truth NGO, 08 November 2015 06:08

The conservative Washington D.C.-based think tank American Enterprise Institute has announced that it would grant the Irving Kristol Award 2015 to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recognition of his contributions to democratic leadership and the role he played in enhancing the US-Israel relations.

The AEI President Arthur C. Brooks said the Israeli PM has demonstrated the courage to defend his nation’s values and a commitment to free enterprise, democracy and human dignity.

The award is named after Irving Kristol, the late American journalist and columnist who is popularly known as the “godfather of neo-conservatism”, with close ties to the Israeli government and political institutions. Irving Kristol’s son William is also a conservative political analyst and the founder of The Weekly Standard magazine. He died of lung cancer on September 18, 2009.

Benjamin Netanyahu has called Irving Kristol a “stalwart friend of Israel and a great champion of the US-Israel alliance”, voicing his contentment with the decision by the American Enterprise Institute in naming him the recipient of the 2015 award.

In an interview with Truth NGO, the Canadian scholar and former university professor Denis Rancourt said awarding the AEI prize to Benjamin Netanyahu is mostly an effort to mend the muddled relations between the Israeli PM and his close friend, the US President Barack Obama.
“The prize and its timing are part of the on-going mediation and communication of interests between the ruling elites of the two nations [the United States and Israel], in such a way as to best advantage and protect the mega-interests that fund the influential think-tank that is AEI,” he said.

Prof. Rancourt believes this award is part of a “mechanism of repair and mediation” to haul the relations between Washington and Tel Aviv, which suffered significantly due to the US government’s insistence on sealing the nuclear deal with Iran and its opposition to the Israeli settlement constructions in the Palestinian lands.

Calling Israel the United States’ “main strongman in the Middle East,” Denis Rancourt underlined the White House’s determination to defend Israel’s modus operandi in the Middle East and Palestinian territories, which he said entails mutual benefits for both states.

Denis Racourt is a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He was removed from all teaching duties in 2008 on the accusations that he granted A+ grades to 23 students in one course of a winter semester, and that he incorporated social activism into his scientific undertakings and teaching methodology. Rancourt is the author of more than 100 academic papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has been a member of “Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Physics.” In 2013, he published the acclaimed book “Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism” in which discusses the limits of academic freedom in North America.

In the following interview with Prof. Rancourt, we discussed the American Enterprise Institute’s nomination of Benjamin Netanyahu as the recipient of Irving Kristol Award 2015, the nuances of US-Israel relations and the global image of Israel at a time when its settlement policies and failed peace talks with Palestine are being seriously debated in the public and by the media.

Q: The American Enterprise Institute has announced that it would present the Irving Kristol Award 2015 to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his contributions to democratic leadership, human rights and the strengthening of U.S.-Israeli relations. What’s your feeling about this award? Why is it being awarded to Mr. Netanyahu at a time when his settlement construction policies are being widely excoriated and the chances for a solution to the conflict with Palestine are growing dimmer? In reaction to the announcement, Benjamin Netanyahu talked of the special relationship between Israel and the United States and said this relationship needs to be bolstered so that the two countries can address the common challenges they face together. Why are the U.S.-Israeli relations so “special”?

A: Israel is the USA’s main strongman in the Middle East. It has “boots on the ground”, a highly developed intelligence network, military preparedness, an ideologically uniform and committed population, and coercive influence on nations in the region. Israel is the USA’s main ally asset in this region that has a controlling share of world oil production capacity, and oil is the most important strategic and economic commodity. In addition, if the US can force oil to be purchased in US dollars, then this secures the US dollar’s preeminence as a global currency.

But Israel is much more than an asset. The USA ruling elite has, over many decades, allowed a symbiotic relationship between the political classes of the two countries to develop, which is mediated by what has been broadly termed the “Israel lobby”, which, in turn, is financed as part of the ruling and economic structure of the whole.

These two elements [that is] Israel’s enforcement role for US dominance in the Middle East, backed by a nuclear arsenal, and the symbiotic system of financed political influences between the two countries, constitute the “special” and “warm” relations that we are told about ad nauseam to generate public acceptance of the non-democratic and criminal arrangement; criminal because it enables war, occupation, and genocide.

This is the context in which we can interpret the American Enterprise Institute 2015 award to Netanyahu. The prize and its timing are part of the on-going mediation and communication of interests between the ruling elites of the two nations, in such a way as to best advantage and protect the mega-interests that fund the influential think-tank that is AEI.

I don’t mean that each national “ruling elite” is homogeneous and without internal battles, but on the global scale, the main competing and interconnected blocks agree on the overarching plan that the USA, with the aligned satellite countries, should dominate the globe completely, that only the US dollar – which the US prints at will – should prevail, that only US corporations should control the most lucrative extraction schemes in the real economy, and that all governments must be subservient. In this system, the “internal battles” are of a lower order and relate to which corporate alliance, including finance corporations, will make the most  money, which strategy of dominance will most benefit a preferred corporate alliance, and which strategy of dominance and geopolitical tactics are ideologically preferred to ensure sustained and increasing dominance.

Thus, when Netanyahu has a “falling out” with Obama, this is representative of a cleavage between their strategy preferences for managing dominance of the Middle East, and this cleavage will also generally exist between the Republican and Democrat blocks, or else Netanyahu would not pursue it. Such a cleavage cannot be allowed to harm the overarching project of regional and world dominance, which is the prerequisite for staggering US multi-national corporate profits. Therefore, efforts must be made to repair the “falling out” and to mediate a solution.

The AEI award is part of this mechanism of repair and mediation. The award is also a way for the AEI to increase and maintain its own status, to remain relevant and influential.

The next question is: What are the matters of disagreement regarding management of the Middle East? Palestine is certainly one matter, as you suggest.

Basically, Israel has a determined policy to annex all of the occupied territories and to deprive Palestinians of nationhood. It achieves this in reality on the ground by combining land theft, settlements, home demolitions, forced exodus, etc. and confinement, constant police and administrative harassment, mass imprisonment, apartheid, and genocidal sanctions and slaughters in Gaza.

The USA allows Israel to have its genocide, as a compromise in exchange for the role Israel plays in US world domination, especially against independent-minded nations in the Middle East.

The entire Israeli geo-psyche is anchored in the paradigm of a constant and unavoidable “terrorist threat”. Netanyahu himself is a significant promoter of this paradigm, as one can see from the titles of books he has edited or authored, [including] International Terrorism: Challenge and Response, edited in 1981, Terrorism: How the West Can Win, edited in 1987, and Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism authored in 1995. Netanyahu has succeeded in convincing the USA to adopt this view, at least as a media cover for a devastating string of wars of aggression intended to re-model the Middle East – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, now Syria and Yemen, with strong intentions regarding Iran and southern Lebanon.

Within this national paradigm of constant existential threat, Israel is in-all-appearance committed to effectively exterminating the Palestinians, with the main goals of stealing the land and ensuring that no viable Palestinian state or influential political formation can ever see the day, using the “terrorism” of children with rocks, desperate youth with kitchen knives, and domestic rockets, as justifications for mass slaughters and murderous military repression.

But Palestine is a problem for the nuclear regional superpower that is Israel, and Palestine has become a source of cleavage between the USA and Israel. The problem is that no empire can sustainably rule and exploit by the threat of force alone. In the age of distributed instant journalism, and thanks to the remarkable Palestinian resistance organized throughout Palestinian society, the peoples of the world have become thoroughly disgusted and outraged at Israeli massacres in Gaza, which are condoned by the USA. This popular outrage has organized itself and has achieved significant political leverage in the UK, France, Germany, etc., and to some degree even in the USA and Canada.

The world is disgusted at the military ethos of Israel, and, increasingly viewing Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya at the now too apparent military ethos of the USA. As such, the USA, under Obama, has come to understand that another Israeli massacre in Gaza could strike a serious blow to the Empire’s image, and that a war with Iran could be intolerable for Europe. These are the considerations that bring Obama to want to de-escalate, but Israel experiences de-escalation as an existential threat, thus, there are presently unavoidable tensions.

Q: Prime Minister Netanyahu is being lauded by the conservative think-tank AEI for his role in cementing the ties between Israel and the United States. However, he has had bitter confrontations with President Obama over the settlements constructions and the Iran deal, which President Obama considers his most significant foreign policy legacy, and now even the Israeli media are talking of the need for an Obama-Netanyahu rapprochement. Do you think that Netanyahu has really been successful in bringing the United States and Israel closer together?

A: Well, Netanyahu has “cemented the ties between Israel and the USA” in all the usual ways, such as co-supporting Daesh (ISIS) against Syria, as a US target for destruction, providing intelligence, providing propaganda support to attack Iran, and killing Palestine in the hope of permanent eradication. These are blood ties nourished by vast expenditures.

The Iran deal is a needed effort to de-escalate the US aggressions of sanctions and of constant and irrational threat of war. The deal was needed in order to create a barrier to prevent Israel from performing rogue airstrikes against infrastructure in Iran. The Iran deal is a huge setback for Israeli militarism. Israel sees the deal as a massive strategic error that threatens its identity as the regional bully, when it comes to nations that cannot be bought or coerced.

Thus, Iran is a major source of tension, at this time, between Israel and the USA. But the question is not so much whether Netanyahu has created the tension. The tension was the result of a dramatic shift in US foreign policy in the region, a shift that is pragmatic, in view of dominance of the entire world, whereas Israel’s ambitions are regional. The shift was away from military confrontation with Iran, and away from Israeli rogue military actions, in order to preserve an appearance of legitimacy as “leader of the free world”.

This shift was due to several factors related to real forces on the ground, in the context of the world’s reaction to Israel’s slaughters in Gaza. The first factor is the resolve and integrity of Iran itself, which is a model of national self-determination and strength of character, and which also has hardened military experience and vast resources and regional influence. Another factor is the valiant war of self-defense waged by Syria, aided by Iran, in which the Syrian people, government and army defended the territory for many years, forcing the USA and its blood-thirsty allies to create a growing monster that repelled the world.

As always, the military battles on the ground, just like the present Russian involvement in Syria, are the main determinants of adjustments in the US foreign policy of dominance, rather than personality differences with leaders such as Netanyahu.

Q: During his upcoming visit to Washington D.C., Benjamin Netanyahu will also meet the experts and fellows at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning advocacy and research organization that falls on the extreme end of the political spectrum as opposed to the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative group which backs Israel’s policies unreservedly. Is he trying to appeal to the Democratic Party and the American liberals and improve his status in their eyes?

A: The shift in US foreign policy of world dominance that has led to the Iran deal is significant, which suggests that the shift is not a mere Democrat policy preference but rather an actual US-regime decision. The decision appears to be to move away from Israel as the sole nexus of Middle East policy, towards a multi-polar approach. For that reason, Netanyahu’s efforts cannot be limited to the Republican block.

Netanyahu will use the occasion of this award to continue selling his vision of military might as the only agent of sustainable advancement for a USA-Israel partnership of dominance in the Middle East, to extract military “aid” increases to compensate for his perceived loss of security, and to continue testing the strength of his Israel lobby in America. He is understandably concerned and must make it a priority to salvage the relationship and secure the most profitable role for Israel.

In a sense, this catastrophe for the Israeli regime is partly of Netanyahu’s making because he is responsible for his mass slaughter campaigns in Gaza, which significantly mobilized anti-Israel sentiment across the world, including among strongly allied nations of the USA, which could decide to have more foreign policy independence on select issues, such as not supporting USA war campaigns, US sanction campaigns, and US-led economic exchange deals that are meant to exclude global rivals.

The US needs its allies to align with its campaigns because it wants to vigorously oppose the economic emergence of the BRICS association [made of] Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. BRICS is poised to leave the US Empire’s economy behind and to eventually abandon the US dollar as its trading currency. BRICS will attempt to play following market forces, whereas the US is habituated both to global control and to an irrelevant debt, since it prints the money.

At this stage, it is difficult to see how the US-Israel partnership will be impacted by Russia’s now-demonstrated willingness to militarily assist its allies and to defend against the threats that US carnage has created. No doubt Netanyahu is promoting Israel’s battle readiness as a needed shield or intervention capacity in what he will project as a grim future.

Q: In 1973, the godfather of neo-conservatism, Irving Kristol, the award which Benjamin Netanyahu will receive is named after him, said the people of Israel wouldn’t be happy with a cut in the U.S. military budget proposed by Senator George McGovern, who was running for the 1972 presidential election. Why should the people of Israel oppose the reduction of U.S. military budget? What Israeli interests could be at stake when the U.S. moves toward demilitarizing its expenditures and investing more capital on the social security of its people?

A: I don’t think the USA will “demilitarize”, in the sense of shifting its foreign policy away from military intimidation as its main instrument and towards economic competition and distributed development, until it is forced to do so by global reality. The USA will certainly never voluntarily “demilitarize” in order to improve the living conditions of its working and non-working class citizens. It is not a simple trade-off. The US prints the global currency at will, and uses loans of this fabricated currency to extort real labor and material resources from its areas of exploitation. It enforces this racket with its military and covert operations and ensures that its corporations make disproportionate profits. The US has over 1,000 major military bases around the globe. Therefore, unlike in other countries, the US does not need to balance a budget. It only needs to dominate. The treatment of US citizens by the US regime is an ideological choice. The regime prefers to fund a massive prison system and paramilitary police rather than create equitable opportunities.

Israel is not about to dismantle its apartheid system. Likewise, the USA is not about to dismantle its economic apartheid within its national borders. The US maintains its apartheid by, among other mechanisms, approximately 1,000 murders of unarmed US citizens – virtually all black citizens – by police officers per year. Israel, by comparison, has a policy beyond solely maintaining apartheid, beyond containment, towards intimidation to abandon territory, and towards complete suppression of Palestinian freedoms. Consequently, the yearly rate of murder of unarmed Palestinians, including children, by Israeli military and police, on a population basis, is typically fifty to one hundred times greater than the rate per capita of US murders of unarmed civilians by police. These numbers do not count the injuries and early deaths from the horrendous conditions of occupation, in both countries. Thus, there is indeed a “special relationship”, an “unbreakable bond”, and a “mutual admiration” between the US and Israel. And Netanyahu is certainly one of the eminent creators of that bond.

Q: There are intellectuals and academicians as Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer who have elaborately documented the influence of a powerful Israeli lobby in the United States, which significantly sways the U.S. politics, including the decision-making of the Congress and the foreign agenda of the administration, as well as the media and entertainment industry. There are pundits like Walter Russell Mead, however, who reject such a notion basically and call the Israeli lobby a “myth”. What’s your viewpoint on these two different convictions?

A: It is beyond doubt that Walt and Mearsheimer have described a real political structure. The Israel lobby is as real as any major institution in the USA. It is well organized into an intricate hierarchy, and it is exceedingly well funded, more than the traditional think-tanks. The lobby has been allowed to flourish because it provides large political campaign funds, while helping to create public acceptance of the US Empire’s actions via Israel in the Middle East.

At this stage, from the perspective of those actually running the Empire, the lobby’s influence probably needs to be reined in because Israel’s hunger for genocide and desire for regional control is somewhat counter to the broader interests of the US regime.

Another feature of the Israel lobby is that it achieves public “acceptance” of the Israel-US dominance projects by outright intimidation of academics and intellectuals in all the professions, which is contrary to the purported values of “the freest country in the world”. The firings of university professors and media professionals have become routine, as has the blacklisting of entertainment industry workers.

Likewise, there is a disturbing trend, organized and spurred by Netanyahu, to criminalize criticism of Israel in all the allied states, such as France, Canada, etc. The US-led Israel lobby is multi-national. Here, in Canada, technically the government could criminally prosecute me for “hate speech” against the state of Israel for writing this very article, using a newly amended provision of the Criminal Code of Canada. For this alone, and many other such achievements, Netanyahu amply deserves the AEI 2015 Award.

But there is backlash and a societal price to pay, and the days of being suppressed by the Israel lobby may come to an end if the US regime decides to give Israel a lesser role. Disallowing the intelligentsia and political activists of a nation from being critical of the nation’s foreign policy investments is a recipe for disaster, a disaster that for now mostly Palestine, Libya, Syria and other nations have suffered.

By Kourosh Ziabari

On the increasing legal suppression of freedom of thought and expression in so-called free and democratic societies

(As evidence for increasing totalitarianism)

By Denis G. Rancourt

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
--John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644

My main overriding message is far from new: that freedom of thought, opinion, and expression is the very basis of a fair society. That freedom of speech is the foundational individual right for a truly democratic system to exist or emerge. And that this freedom must be defended without compromise, and without bias against any particular view, no matter how distasteful or disturbing the particular view might be to some or most people.

Undemocratic powerful interests always benefit from any successful attempt to divide and conquer by censoring targeted expression. Citizens should fiercely unite around the principle of freedom of expression, and vehemently reject all constraints on form or content of individual expression (choice of words, signing, body language, tone, and images).

The message of the centrality of free expression in human societies has been strongly made by a stellar array of historical figures (Milton, Locke, Spinoza, Voltaire, Diderot, John Stuart Mill ...), and it is stated in universal covenants and declarations, but it is largely not understood or authentically accepted by a majority of societal actors. Thus, I make this added attempt to drive the point home with the following recent examples and analysis, at a time when totalitarianism is evidently making substantive forays across the Western world.

The threat against our freedoms is not from outside. Rather, it is from those who manage us. And, injustices cannot be resolved unless individuals are free to exert influence through speech. Individual influence is the primary mechanism of accountability of institutions, of private corporations, and of governments.

Only a small part of the full spectrum of increasing suppression of personal freedoms --

• from media concentration, 
• to editorial alignment and an absence of journalistic independence, 
• to CIA oversight of Hollywood, 
• to structural threats to web freedom, 
• to copyright excesses, 
• to pay-wall barriers against the sharing publicly-funded research, 
• to extreme and continuous standardized testing in schools, 
• to centralized control of school curricula without professional independence of teachers, 
• to codes of conduct on campuses, 
• to decreasing access to information including one's own personal information held by government, 
• to applied intolerance of "threatening" views in every sphere of life, 
• to legal precedents that disregard international law in freedom of speech cases, 
• to "human rights" codes that do not require establishing actual harm against any actual victim, 
• to increasingly constrained professional independence in all professions, 
• to "hate speech" criminal codes that jail expressive perpetrators of victimless "crimes", 
• to overbearing and formalized lobby-influence on politicians at every level, 
• to the implementation of complete surveillance, 
• to increasing incarceration rates and increasing sentences, 
• to the militarization of police training, 
• to global witch hunts against whistle blowers, etc. 

-- is considered here.

The present article is a cursory survey of the mechanisms of select legal instruments in the current palpable increase in totalitarianism, as viewed from the perspective of direct state interference in individual thought and expression, occurring in the US and US-aligned countries, Canada in particular.

An Elaborate Edifice of Sophistry to Counter the Threat of Democracy

A society is totalitarian to the exact degree that the individual is prevented from effectually expressing his/her opinions and beliefs. Suppression of expression intended to exert influence is an accurate gauge of totalitarianism.

The elemental opposing force against runaway hierarchical dominance is the balancing force of the individual seeking freedom by attempting to exert influence. [a]

Nothing can be clearer about societal organization. The violent oppression that necessarily accompanies society's dominance hierarchy is countered only by the individual's efforts to have influence, to have a significant say in his/her own life and in the life of his/her community.

The individual, acting alone or in association with other individuals, is the essence of the protection against totalitarianism, fascism, and oligarchic plutocracy, and this is as true in the so-called "free and democratic societies" as anywhere else.

The establishment that manages the dominance hierarchy [1], uses an elaborate edifice of sophistry to artificially dissociate individual expression from the natural right to practice influence by expression. In this way, expression can be controlled where its potential influence is judged undesirable, or where it is feared to have a potential cascading effect on public perception.

Trusting that ideas can be left to be evaluated by individual citizens would be to leave the priorities of society to be decided by people. The resulting risk of popular influence is intolerable to any dominance hierarchy, by definition.

Therefore, for example, despite it being universally accepted, at least on paper and thanks to a residual sway of reason in the present era, that the right to have an opinion is absolute [2], virtually all the statutes, covenants, and legal-establishment treatises nonetheless codify that the right to express an opinion is not absolute, but rather is subject to "reasonable and necessary limits" that can be imposed by the courts that are maintained by the state. The "authorities" go on to pronounce that by imposing "reasonable limits", one achieves a "balance" between the competing interests of expression and of minimizing harm from expression, without ever acknowledging any cognitive malaise from admitting a "right" to freedom of expression while contributing to the massive legal apparatus that controls which expression can actually be free.

The elaborate edifice of sophistry, with its many arms and legs, that is used to assuage discomforts in the legal mind regarding suppression of individual expression is worthy of study and should be explicitly described. To no one's surprise, the needed study is not an exercise for which legal scholars have exhibited much enthusiasm.

The Device of Giving Institutions and Corporations Human Rights to Counter Human Rights

In one branch of the said edifice of sophistry, the court rulings expressly admit that human freedom of expression is essential to human existence and fulfillment, and "constitute[s] the foundation stone for every free and democratic society" [3], yet completely fail to discern expression of the individual from expression of multinational corporations and of powerful individuals representing institutions and nations. As a result, individual expression critical of corporations or critical of officials representing large institutions is scrutinized and carries life-changing consequences whereas mass advertizing, media control, and government propaganda are protected under a contrived umbrella of "freedom of expression", and are not constrained to prevent skewing the democratic process, undue concentrated influence, and suppression of individual freedoms.

On the one hand, there is an absolute paper-right to holding, developing, and changing one's opinion, but on the other hand there is virtually no individual recourse or protection against the dominant practice of top-down social engineering of identities, attitudes, and beliefs. The fringe counter-movements of home schooling and "going off grid" are heavily regulated and come at a high price. And there is no individual protection against employer demands for ideological conformity, especially among professional workers [4].

When a judge is tasked with "balancing" the individual's right of free expression against "reasonable limits" in a "free and democratic society", it never enters his/her legal mind that the powerful individual screeching "defamation" and whose extravagant legal costs are entirely paid by a corporation or using public money should suck it up and adjust accordingly, that the whole idea of a democracy is that there will be a cacophony of criticisms from individual citizens in addition to organized messaging and all the rest.

Instead, typically, the judge will apply the common law of defamation, which evolved to protect the sensitivities of the privileged against false rumours, and to protect the powerful against the democratizing effects of the emerging technology of the printing press, prior to the modern legal enshrinement of the universal principles of human rights.

A Tenacious and Regressive Common Law of Defamation That Is Refusing To Go Away

Even a superficial look at the tenets of the common law of defamation would be enough to make any reasonable person admit that such a structure is incompatible with finding a "balance" that justifies suppressing an individual's expression. Not so for our highest judges [5].

How is the common law of defamation incompatible with the right to free expression? It is not difficult to see, unless you are trained in law [6]:

"[Defamation] is the only common law tort (or cause of action) where damages — actual damage to reputation — and malice (malice of defamation) are assumed, and need not be proven in court. The result is a presumption of guilt — regarding falsity of the expression, malice of the defendant, and damages to the plaintiff — that can only be overturned if the defendant can prove one of the available defences, which are strictly limited and codified. ...

Defamation law is structured such that if a complained of criticism, comment, or opinion is ruled by the court to have the tendency to reduce the social reputation of the plaintiff, in the mind of a fictitious “reasonable person”, then damage to reputation is assumed and a financial award for damages is due, even in a total absence of evidence of actual damage to reputation (such as: lost fans of an artist, lost clients of a service provider, lost social connections, loss of employment, fewer invitations to social or business functions, etc.). The criticism complained of is all that is needed to obtain damages. Guilt is automatic, and the only possible defences are strictly limited and codified, carrying the names of “truth”, “privilege”, “fair comment”, and “responsible reporting”. The presumed-guilty party has the onus to prove an allowed defence."

A minority of Canadian legal scholars, the exceptions that prove the rule, have correctly argued that the presumptions of falsity, malice, and damages structurally inherent in the common law of defamation should be abolished [7].

The OCLA report adds [8]:

"All of this is exacerbated by the fact that there is no practical need for the tort of defamation because there are other common law torts that sufficiently protect against unjustified attacks to personal reputation, and which correctly require proof of harm and of malice. These include the torts of: malicious falsehood, intentional infliction of mental suffering, conspiracy to harm, and so on."

There you have it, in the face of both Canada's international obligations and Canada's own constitutional Charter, its highest court irrationally clings to a defunct common law that most-conveniently suppresses individual expression (Hill v. Church of Scientology, see Endnote-[5]). In the case in question, the Supreme Court even ruled that the fact that the plaintiff (a Crown prosecutor) had "received promotions, was elected a bencher and eventually appointed a trial judge in the General Division of the Court of Ontario" following suffering the alleged possible harm to reputation was simply not relevant in any way [9].

The Device of Attributing Diffuse and Distributed Human Rights to Remove Actual Human Rights of Individuals

Outside of applications of the common law of defamation, the highest courts are further eroding the principle of free expression, rather than moving towards recognizing it as a true right, even when the question before the court is not one of defamation.

A terrifying example has occurred recently (2013) in Canada's supreme court. The legalistic catastrophe was astutely described by social-scientist Professor Peter J. McCormick [10]. In Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott the court somewhat diverged from its own past applications of and tentative skirmishes with the proverbial "balance", and definitively parted from the universally accepted doctrine that expression can be suppressed only to the degree shown to be necessary [11], by finding that "All rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are subject to reasonable limitations" [12], not "necessary limitations" but instead "reasonable limitations".

"Reasonable" means that the court can decide, on the basis of its subjective evaluation, what expression can "reasonably" be suppressed, rather than be burdened by the objective and evidence-based criterion of necessity. And the court did exactly that.

The court even went so far as to find that truth should not be an absolute defence against the state's suppression of an expressed statement that is both truthful and sincerely delivered, and that it can be "reasonable" to suppress such a statement in a "free and democratic society", without needing to make an objective and evidence-based evaluation of whether the suppression is necessary. There can be no substitute for the court's own words, when trying to fully appreciate the sophistry needed to achieve the goal [13]:

139. Critics find the absence of a defence of truth of particular concern, given that seeking truth is one of the strongest justifications for freedom of expression. They argue that the right to speak the truth should not be lightly restricted, and that any restriction should be seen as a serious infringement.

140. I agree with the argument that the quest for truth is an essential component of the “marketplace of ideas” which is, itself, central to a strong democracy. The search for truth is also an important part of self-fulfillment. However, I do not think it is inconsistent with these views to find that not all truthful statements must be free from restriction. Truthful statements can be interlaced with harmful ones or otherwise presented in a manner that would meet the definition of hate speech.

141. As Dickson C.J. stated in Keegstra, at p. 763, there is “very little chance that statements intended to promote hatred against an identifiable group are true, or that their vision of society will lead to a better world”. To the extent that truthful statements are used in a manner or context that exposes a vulnerable group to hatred, their use risks the same potential harmful effects on the vulnerable groups that false statements can provoke. The vulnerable group is no less worthy of protection because the publisher has succeeded in turning true statements into a hateful message. In not providing for a defence of truth, the legislature has said that even truthful statements may be expressed in language or context that exposes a vulnerable group to hatred.

142. Some interveners argued that there should be a defence of sincerely held belief. In their view, speech that is made in good faith and on the basis of the speaker’s religious beliefs should be given greater protection, or constitute an absolute defence to any prohibition. These arguments anticipate the question still to be considered of whether an infringement of s. 2(a) of the Charter by s. 14(1)(b) would be justified under a s. 1 analysis. It is sufficient here to say that if the sincerity of a religious belief would automatically preclude the finding of a contravention of s. 14(1)(b), the s. 1 analysis would be derailed with no balancing of the competing rights.

143. Apart from that concern, the fact that a person circulates a hate publication in the furtherance of a sincere religious belief goes to the question of the subjective view of the publisher, which is irrelevant to the objective application of the definition of hatred. Allowing the dissemination of hate speech to be excused by a sincerely held belief would, in effect, provide an absolute defence and would gut the prohibition of effectiveness.

This kind of extreme judicial activism towards suppression of expression, in the face of an international covenant ratified by the home state, typically occurs in cases where the issue before the court is one that opposes an unpopular minority defendant (here a religious anti-gay fanatical pamphleteer) against a strident majority view that enshrines "political correctness". In Hill v. Church of Scientology (above, and Endnotes [5] and [9]), the defendant was an unpopular religious group widely considered a "sect", directly attacked by the Crown whose legal costs were paid by the state. The action lead to the largest award of unproven "damages" ever seen, and to the above-described sophistic findings about the common law of defamation.

Occasionally, the alignment of societal-mobbing circumstances works the other way. In WIC Radio v. Simpson [14], the plaintiff was in the minority as a public critic of gay-rights content in school curricula and the defendant was a radio station and its talk-show host who had compared the plaintiff to Hitler and stated that she was personally inclined towards violent methods in advancing her campaign, none of which had any demonstrable basis in fact. In that case, Canada's supreme court made the strongest defence of the right to free speech in its post-Charter history, which gave a needed boost to the so-called "fair comment" defence in the common law of defamation, while of course preserving the above-described absurd tenets of this common law.

The Aggressive Assault of Criminalizing "Hate Speech"

The situation is even more alarming when it comes to "hate speech crime". "Free and democratic societies" such as those in Canada, France, and Germany, have "hate speech" instruments in their criminal codes. Here sophistry is barely needed. The state need only prescribe which utterances are criminal and decide which targets will be prosecuted.

"Hate speech crimes" are remarkable "crimes", in that there are no identified victims and no proven harm. Those charged can be sentences to jail, the ultimate suppression of freedom (barring execution), without the prosecutor being required to prove harm or intent to do harm or that there was a single actual victim.

The unusual features of these criminal codes do not appear to ruffle the cognitive serenity of the managers of law and order. Judges are bothered by the victimless nature of these extraordinary "crimes" as much as they are vigilant regarding the remarkable statistical coincidence that every time a frail victim of police brutality is beat to a pulp the police file charges of "assault" by the victim, which are duly prosecuted by the Crown. Smart-phone cameras and web-postings are making such a judicial blind spot more and more difficult to maintain. But with "hate crimes" the prosecutors need only find sufficiently unpopular targets to make burn-at-the-stake examples that serve the state propaganda for war or whatever campaign of international exploitation.

"Hate crime" codes are intrinsically political, and are a direct affront against human rights. In Canada, a "hate crime" can only be prosecuted with the explicit and statutory permission of the government (Attorney General) [15].

The criminal-code excesses that are increasingly present in Canada were foreseen by international law, thanks to excesses observed in "less democratic" states. For example [16]:

States parties should ensure that counter-terrorism measures are compatible with paragraph 3. Such offences as “encouragement of terrorism” and “extremist activity” as well as offences of “praising”, “glorifying”, or “justifying” terrorism, should be clearly defined to ensure that they do not lead to unnecessary or disproportionate interference with freedom of expression.

Laws that penalize the expression of opinions about historical facts are incompatible with the obligations that the Covenant imposes on States parties in relation to the respect for freedom of opinion and expression.116 The Covenant does not permit general prohibition of expressions of an erroneous opinion or an incorrect interpretation of past events. Restrictions on the right of freedom of opinion should never be imposed and, with regard to freedom of expression, they should not go beyond what is permitted in paragraph 3 or required under article 20. 

The modern practice in Canada, France, and Germany towards explicitly making so-called "holocaust denial" a crime punishable by incarceration is a shocking testament to stupidity and to a crass special-interest fetish tied to geopolitical projects. It appears to be too much to ask that law makers actually read the unassailable academic work of Professor Norman Finkelstein on the question of the exploitation of the Nazi holocaust by powerful special interests [17], which was endorsed by the world's preeminent scholar of the Nazi holocaust, Professor Raul Hilberg [18], before the said law makers vote for such embarrassingly stupid laws. 

If Canada cared about historical genocides, it could respect its treaty obligations and pay reparations arising from its own most-efficient genocide of native peoples, the persistent consequences of which are repeatedly documented in United Nations reports. Likewise, France could pay due reparations to Haiti, for a start. All of this can be done without violating free expression rights. Instead, these "free and democratic societies" pass criminal codes that would, on their letter, put both Norman Finkelstein and Raul Hilberg (if he was not already dead) in jail for, among other things, publicly contradicting or criticizing the dogma of the "6 million deaths" figure. Unbelievable. You could not make this up.

Freedom Is Better

All of these legal instruments of intimidation against free expression (political correctness codes, defamation law, and hate-speech criminal codes) represent massive systemic repression against individuals, both directly and psychologically. The resulting harm to human development, the resulting quashing of societal creativity, and the resulting damage to the human spirit are impossible to imagine qualitatively, let alone gauge in magnitude. As a result of the overall regime of thought control, codified by these legal instruments against free expression, we are individually stunted and made capable of participating in horrendous crimes of state, including hugely asymmetric wars of aggression and wholesale destruction of distant nations.

The opposite is liberty. In an actual free society, expressed ideas -- no matter how insulting or insensitive or perceived-as-threatening to our values and identities -- are debated, ignored, developed, forgotten, recorded, reacted to, rejected, embraced, or whatever, but expression itself is never suppressed at the source; because the source is a human being, and one's emotional reaction belongs to the person having that reaction, who in turn also has a right to freedom of speech.

For example, evolution-theory is threatening to the identity and beliefs of many people. Therefore, should it be criminalized? Likewise, creationism is threatening to the beliefs and world views of many people. Therefore, should it be criminalized, suppressed with fines, or not allowed in schools? Homosexuality is threatening to the beliefs and identities of many people. Therefore, should expression about homosexuality be banned? Should the gay reality of society be celebrated and taught in schools, or should it be forbidden talk in the classroom?

If what is taught in school is received uncritically by children, then the problem is not what is taught, but rather school and parents themselves. In a free society, children and adults are not so gullible because they constantly practice speech and are subjected to different opinions, and therefore think for themselves about things that matter to them. In a free society, children bring much of the curriculum with them into the classroom, and parents are allowed into that sacred place. Fights over the content of the indoctrination material, whether the material is from the dominant paradigms or from opposing paradigms, are largely fights over the kind of zombie one hopes to create.

The thinking person is not afraid of expressed opinions and does not waste time arguing about form rather than meaning. The independent thinker does not need others to be gagged and punished for their opinions, or for the manner in which those opinions are expressed. The listener's loss of interest and the loss of engagement are punishments enough for the communicator, in a healthy society.

The state instruments of suppression of speech erode human relations, impoverish the human experience, and deprive us of individual influence and political engagement. We have a natural right to speak and to hear others speak. No entity has a legitimate right to silence individuals. The damage done by the legal instruments of suppression of speech is immeasurable. 


Endnotes

[a] See: Rancourt, Denis G., Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, Stairway Press, 2013.

[1] There is a broad scientific and sociological research literature on the established fact that humans are primates that establish and maintain societal dominance hierarchies. For example, in the area of medical research, stress from the dominance hierarchy is a dominant determinant of individual health, see the review: Sapolsky, Robert M., The Influence of Social Hierarchy on Primate Health, Science 29 April 2005: Vol. 308 no. 5722 p. 648-652, DOI: 10.1126/science.1106477

[2] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 19(1); and General comment No. 34, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee, 102nd session, CCPR/C/GC/34, paragraphs 9 and 10

[3] For example, many rulings give lip service to General comment No. 34, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee, 102nd session, CCPR/C/GC/34, at paragraph 2 (emphasis added)

[4] See: Schmidt, Jeff, Disciplined Minds: A critical look at salaried professionals and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001

[5] In Canada, after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was introduced, the Supreme Court found it wise to opine "In conclusion, in its application to the parties in this action, the common law of defamation complies with the underlying values of the Charter and there is no need to amend or alter it.": Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, [1995] 2 SCR 1130, 1995 CanLII 59 (SCC), paragraph 141, which has had the regressive effect of essentially closing that door.

[6] Ontario Civil Liberties Association, OCLA position paper on Bill 83: The tort of defamation must be abolished in Ontario, January 2014, http://ocla.ca/our-work/reports/report-bill-83/

[7] Ibid., at endnote-2: "Bayer proposes that the plaintiff should be required to prove that the words complained of are false, did indeed cause damage to reputation, and that the defendant acted with actual malice or negligence: Carolin Anne Bayer, Re-thinking the common law of defamation: Striking a new balance between freedom of expression and the protection of the individual’s reputation, thesis, Master of Laws, University of British Columbia, 2001. See also: Hilary Young, “But names don’t necessarily hurt me: Considering the effect of disparaging statements on reputation”, Queen’s Law Journal, 37:1, 2011."

[8] Ibid., in the body of the report

[9] Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, [1995] 2 SCR 1130, 1995 CanLII 59 (SCC), at paragraph 177

[10] McCormick, Peter J., The End of the Charter Revolution, University of Toronto Press, 2015, pages 155-158

[11] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 19(3); and General comment No. 34, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee, 102nd session, CCPR/C/GC/34, paragraphs 27, and 33 to 36

[12] Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott, [2013] 1 SCR 467, 2013 SCC 11 (CanLII), at paragraph 1

[13] Ibid., paragraphs 139 to 143

[14] WIC Radio Ltd. v. Simpson, [2008] 2 SCR 420, 2008 SCC 40 (CanLII)

[15] See, for example, one of the efforts of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association: September 24, 2014, Letter to the Attorney general of BC; and OCLA campaign page.

[16] General comment No. 34, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee, 102nd session, CCPR/C/GC/34, at paragraph 46, and paragraph 49

[17] Finkelstein, Norman, The Holocaust Industry, Verso, 2003 (Second edition)

[18] "Raul Hilberg - Historian prepared to risk his career to expose the Holocaust", The Guardian, September 25, 2007; "Raul Hilberg, 81; scholar was an authority on the Holocaust", Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2007


The author's own difficult adventure with the legal system of language control is described, in part, here: Rogue Courts in Canada Trample Self-Represented Litigants

Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.